


sound of blackbirds cry

by lesbinej



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Minor Emily Kaldwin/Wyman, Nonbinary Wyman (Dishonored), Post-Canon, Sneaking Around, idk this is really just a stealth study, they/them pronouns for wyman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 01:06:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19415302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbinej/pseuds/lesbinej
Summary: i cant name this after the instrumental playlist i listened to while writing it so uh have this?it's just a short sneaky study(title from the longer i run / peter bradley adams)





	sound of blackbirds cry

Her feet skid across the cobblestones, just enough to slide a few inches in the morning fog that turns everything slick under her feet. It’s a long familiar feeling, but it still makes her heart jump into her throat for a moment, scared she’ll topple to the ground from the loss of balance. 

But her feet stay sure, stay true to where she aimed them, and she comes to a halt on the edge of the rooftop, looking to the next already. 

Emily knows the Dunwall skyline, knows it better than the lines of her palm or the feeling of her heartbeat in her chest. She knows Dunwall—she  _ is  _ Dunwall. It’s her blood, her oxygen, her birth, her death. It’s everything to her. 

The sun still hasn’t risen yet, so the streets are still dark, save for a few streetlamps illuminating small patches of the ground below. From here, they look like fireflies, almost—she isn’t even that high up, but the wind tips precariously under her toes, and if she falls, she will most certainly die. 

But she doesn’t think about falling. 

Emily barely even looks for her next foothold—she takes another leap, clattering from one cobblestone roof to the next. The alleys are narrow here, narrow enough that she could pretty much step to the next rooftop if she wanted to. But she doesn’t, because being too presumptuous is to die, being too prideful is to die, being too sure of herself, being too careless, being too sloppy—it’s lethal, both in the throne room and away from it. 

The throne. Some days, Emily wants to topple it to the ground and tear it to pieces with Corvo’s sword, the sword that she still snakes sometimes and takes it with her when she sneaks away. The sword dangling at her hip right now. 

The only thing that stops her is the memory of her mother, her mother that wanted her to be the best Empress she could be, her mother that would still be Empress if she wasn’t murdered. Her mother that trusted her with this duty, and she can’t let her down, even if it feels like she already has. 

But those thoughts do nothing to deter the morning chill that settles in her bones when she stays still too long, so she shakes herself out of them, looking to the next roof. 

Here, at the edge of the former Flooded District, the tall, uniform buildings that make up most of Dunwall become scraggly and more distant, disjointed. It’s harder to stay caught in the monotony of her movements when each one has to be calculated. 

But that’s why she comes here. 

The lamp she pretty much always drops down to, less than ten feet below the tips of her boots at the edge of the roof, flickers off. Dawn must be breaking soon—good. She’s meeting Wyman at the docks at sunrise. 

This time, instead of possibly making noise she doesn’t want to, Emily peers down the adjacent side of the building, searching for footholds to grasp while she descends the abandoned apartment she made her perch on. There seems to be a row of them to her right, though some look more worn than others. She’ll have to risk it. 

The first brick she leans the ball of her foot on seems solid enough, so she eases her weight onto it, her hands sure in their grip on the gutter. 

The third windowsill, still at least three more from the ground, gives way underneath her—suddenly, sharply. She hisses in a breath, fingernails scraping the bricks she had been grasping, hard, and she’s sure they’re ragged now—but it barely matters when the feeling of her stomach dropping is still pounding in her chest, twisting her guts around and making her queasy. 

She refocuses, leather boots against the rough brick wall that feels like it might collapse underneath her, searching for some kind of purchase to keep all of her weight from smashing to bits on the cold, hard stone below. She sucks in a breath—one, two, three—and edges her toes out further until she finds another part of sill that hadn’t collapsed, held firmly in place by gravity. This one, she’s sure, won’t fall from underneath her. 

From there, it’s short work to get to earth, to dirt, to the mud from the long drained waters that gave this district their name, still damp and never going to quite fully dry. It’s been fifteen years, after all. 

The docks aren’t far from here—there’s a reason the plague boats came through here to dump their bodies. It’s a less favored shortcut, given the history, but Emily likes it anyways.

She likes it less when she sees people sleeping underneath benches or crates, out on the street—it’s a stinging reminder of where she comes from, the privilege and power she holds.

So today, when she sees the same old man that once told her the story of how he lost his eye, she drops a few coins of five in the empty bottle of Gristol cider at his feet—it’s what it’s there for, anyways. It’s not like he’ll ever know she was here.

Her boots are silent with practiced ease as she glides between the shadows cast by the lamps on the ground, infinitely more aware of how vulnerable she is, here. She likes the roofs, likes the skyline, likes the breeze and the smoky air. Down here, it’s just… damp, and cold, and so very, very open. 

But there isn’t a good path over rooftops to get to the docks, and she knows Wyman will be waiting in a boat for her underneath the bridge between this district and the Market, and she’ll be late. As always. 

Here, with her boots sinking into the moist earth and the fog heavier than ever, just before the dawn breaks, is what she thinks being Empress is about. The grit of it, the realness of it—if she didn’t sneak out sometimes, she’d have no idea what would come of her words in the diplomatic meetings. She’d be naive and lost, still, back to how it was before Delilah. 

A guard passes—Emily’s so wrapped in her thoughts that she barely notices in time, snatching her foot back and sidling behind the dumpster that the street workers haven’t collected for the day previous, yet. Her breath staggers in her throat, knowing, knowing that even if she’d been caught, it’s not as dire as it was when any notice meant she’d surely be put to death. But still, it’s hard to let those habits die. Especially when that thinking was the only thing that kept her alive for half of a year, skittering in sewers and across the Serkonan clay rooftops so different from the Dunwall stone. 

The guard’s footsteps pass, fading further down—he must not have noticed the small commotion she made. She’s getting sloppy. 

But she waits another moment to see if more guards will follow—it’s unusual for them to travel closely, given that Dunwall has a lot of ground to cover in its patrols, but it’s not unheard of for them to intersect. 

The street remains clear, though. Silent, save for the rats scurrying out of sight in the pre-dawn light, and the moths collecting around the lamps. 

_ Staying warm?  _ Emily thinks grudgingly, noting the chill in her own skin. Wyman will chastise her, tell her that she’ll catch cold, and she’ll laugh and say  _ ‘It’s an excuse to get out of those meetings, you know.’  _

It makes the corner of her lip quirk, imagining it. Imagining seeing their face again, all worn and leathery and crinkled around the eyes, like all they can do is smile in the warm Morley sun. It’s so refreshing, so disparate to the stoic-faced nobles she sees every day that give her nothing but polite  _ ‘Your Imperial Majesty’ _ s and other wish-wash that falls in one ear and out the other. 

When Wyman comes to visit, there’s no pleasantries, no small talk—just Wyman smiling widely, their fine hair always braided a different way, their barrel arms always outstretched to wrap her in a bracing hug—a whispered  _ ‘Hey, Em Ems,’  _ into her ear, a soft, warm, sunny kiss pressed to her cheek. 

She misses them.

So Emily peers into the street, empty and still, and skirts the edge of the street light, preferring to not let the golden threads in her coat glitter and catch eyes. It’s too early for attention, and it’s earlier still for  _ unwanted _ attention. 

Luckily, the bridge where Wyman agreed to meet her isn’t far—not more that a few stones’ throws, at least. There’s a collapsed apartment between here and there, but it’s so easy to climb through, Emily could probably do it blindfolded. She’ll have to bet on that with Wyman at a future date. 

Given the fog and the still-early light that’s only just now beginning to crack the horizon, it’s easy enough to slip between guard patrols for a few more minutes, tucking underneath wooden crates or behind dumpsters again. Her feet are light enough on the stone streets to not clunk like the soldiers’ boots do, something Corvo once pointed out to her, tucked into an alley late at night. 

_ ‘Hear their boots?’  _ He’d asked. They waited a moment while a patrol walked by, and Emily remembers wincing at the metallic clanging. Corvo held a finger to his lips.  _ ‘You’ll always hear them coming.’  _

And she does—the guards come and go every couple of minutes, their presence long announced by their guns and shiny metal armor pieces clinking together like tiny chains dragging across the stone streets. She pauses each time, taking a moment to slip into some hiding place, and waiting with breath held for the moment they march past, and then quickly taking back to the corners of the alleys. 

Emily’s glad that they’re patrolling here, at least—if there’s one thing she wants to be sure of after the coup, it’s security. 

Soon after the sun is just beginning to graze the tops of the buildings, Emily approaches the abandoned apartment where Wyman is waiting for her, just on the other side. The day seems to have only gotten chillier since the sun began rising—a phenomenon not uncommon to Dunwall and its grey winters. 

Emily’s fingers sting with the chill, but she tucks her chin further into the collar of her coat, her jaw setting as she sees the broken glass window panes, the rotting wood, the eroded stone of the dilapidated excuse for a building in front of her. Really, it’s embarrassing that no one’s done anything about this yet. 

Privately, Emily has a small fondness for this ruin, given that it was one of the first places Wyman kissed her—but it’s no excuse to let it stay standing this long.

_ Really, Emily,  _ she chastises herself as her hand scrapes at her usual handhold and, upon weight pressing down on it, snaps the wood right off, revealing heavy rot damage.  _ You’d think a plague would teach you to clean up your city.  _

She hears it in Wyman’s voice. 

Given that her usual way through the place is now obsolete, Emily braces her shoulder and cracks it against a particularly thin-looking piece of wall, holding her breath as it gives way with a wet  _ smushing  _ sound that shouldn’t come from anything wooden at all. The smell of mildew makes her hold in a gag. 

This floor seems mostly barren and peeling away at the seams—Emily always preferred scaling a little higher before crossing through, but today, it looks like she has no other choice. It’s hard not to imagine the whole structure just falling down on top of her, though—especially when even the stone looks like it’s sinking inwards. 

She stays close to the walls, hoping that maybe the places where it’s all bolted together are more structurally sound, though when a particularly strong breeze wafts through the street, carrying smells of fish and ash, she clings to the wall and prays that the swaying doesn’t mean it collapses. 

And it doesn’t—eventually, the whole building stops rocking, and the creaking of old wood and old stone and old glass fades into the normal sounds of a person walking floors that haven’t meant to be walked on since before she was born. 

Emily lets out a breath, relieved that she won’t see the afterlife today, and nearly crawls her way out the back door of that building—long condemned before even the Rat Plague, possibly before Jessamine reigned—sighing as the morning light, now in full swing, beams down on her face. 

A welcome sight greets her—Wyman, in their small boat beneath the bridge, is waving at her excitedly with both hands. She missed their face, missed their arms, missed their hookah with White Leaf Tobacco that they always smuggled in just for her, giggling out on the canal waters away from prying eyes (her father). 

She can see the white of their teeth from where she stands—Emily holds up one hand to block the sun, the other hand waving back to Wyman. 

“Thank the stars I made it on time,” Emily mutters to herself, picking her way down to the rocky shore. 


End file.
